Two Truths and a Lie
by heyjupiter
Summary: Pyro's death brings Erik and Charles together. Erik/Charles, sortakinda. Character death if you didn't get that from the first line of the summary...


Title: Two Truths and a Lie  
Rating: PG-13  
Category: E/C sorta, angst  
Words: 1385  
Summary: Pyro's death brings Erik and Charles together.  
Notes: Um, character death, if you didn't notice in the summary. Written for the 2005 XMM Ficathon, for andrastewhite, who requested: "Xavier/Magneto: "Something set post-X2. Not that I expect you to get them back together - anything dealing with the fallout from the movie in some way is fine."

"I was sorry to hear about Jean, you know," Erik said, breaking the long silence that had followed their initial greetings.

Charles accepted his words with an elegant nod. "It is... hard to lose a student." Neither of them looked at the small urn in the back seat, which contained St. John's remains. Cremation seemed a perfect ending to St. John's-- no, Pyro's, Charles reminded himself-- too brief life. Not only was he returned to the fire that increasingly seemed to have consumed his own life, but there would be no troublesome body to hide, no cryptic tombstone carved with an assumed name.

Charles was still unsure as to why Erik had invited him on this trip. He was still unsure as to why he had accepted the invitation-- why he had allowed himself to be helped into a car by his worst enemy, without even telling any of his X-Men where or why or with whom he was leaving. ("Some old business to take care of," he had told Scott, and if Scott had had any doubts, he'd kept them to himself.)

He would tell the students about John's death, of course. They deserved to know. He had even wondered if he should have asked for Bobby and Rogue to come help scatter the ashes; he convinced himself that they were too young to be involved with such a thing, but he knew that this was unsound-- they had made it through the death of a teacher, through the apparent betrayal of a friend, after all. It wasn't until Erik arrived without Mystique that he fully realized how badly he had been hoping to be alone with his old friend.

He glanced sideways at Erik. A casual observer would have thought Erik's face looked calm, even peaceful, but Charles knew how to read that slight tightening of the corners of his lips, the barely noticeable furrowing of the eyebrows, and the extra wrinkle in the corners of his eyes, and they all spelled out a message of pain.

Charles didn't know how close Erik and John had been-- the suspicion that they were lovers had occasionally slipped into his mind unbidden, but on the whole he had preferred to believe otherwise. Still, he had been living in close quarters with Pyro for nearly a year, it was natural that he would be pained by the boy's death. And while he was sure that Erik would deny feeling responsible for his death-- "Pyro made his own choices," he would say-- he and Charles both knew that Pyro wouldn't have been in Fort Hamilton if it weren't for Erik.

Following the events at Alkali Lake-- that was how Charles had to think of them, "the events at Alkali Lake," anything more specific still caused a wince-- Erik had led Pyro on a series of destructive guerilla attacks on military bases, weapons plants, and even the homes of outspoken military leaders. The result, of course, was to increase the anti-mutant hysteria, even as "Senator Kelly" attempted to justify or at least downplay their actions in media-circus press conferences.

But, Erik would point out, he had also succeeded in showing the world what mutants could do-- he never damaged surveillance cameras, and their twisted and singed aftermath always made the evening news, which Charles could never keep himself from watching. With the death of William Stryker and his files, as well as few strategic memory wipes, Charles didn't think there was anyone left in the government who really knew how to fight Magneto, and he knew Erik and Pyro always had the element of surprise, but he still waited with dread for the day they ran into some clever soldier with rubber bullets and tranquilizer darts

And yet their attacks had relatively few casualties-- they nearly always struck at night, and they had been known to set off the fire alarm at factories with night workers, to evacuate the buildings **before** they began. They wanted to do some damage and instill fear, certainly, but Erik had not yet reached the level of cold-blooded murder. This puzzled Charles, given Erik's actions at Alkali Lake. Had he simply been unable to resist the possibility of a world entirely without humans? Had he had faith all along that the X-Men would be able to free Charles before it was too late? He longed to ask, but was too afraid of the answer, and the drive continued in silence. In fact, there were a lot of questions he wanted to ask-- how exactly had John died? How had he managed to keep his death hidden from the media? What was Erik trying to do?-- but he wasn't certain he really wanted the answers to any of them.

Finally, Erik pulled his understatedly expensive car into the entrance of a little state park. He calmly paid the bored-looking ranger a two dollar parking fee and pulled into the empty parking lot. Charles realized that Erik didn't have a handicapped parking permit, but with the car surrounded by empty space it didn't really matter. He raised an eyebrow as both car doors as well as the trunk suddenly popped open, but the ranger was still trapped in his little parking booth and couldn't see behind him, and there wasn't another person around. The smallest wave of Erik's hand brought Charles's wheelchair out of the trunk and in front of Charles's door. Erik silently helped him into the chair with the grace and ease he had had years ago, then handed Charles the urn. Erik looked him in the eye and said, "Pryo died the way he wanted to," and stepped behind Charles's wheelchair. Charles was too started to respond. Erik then began pushing Charles forward. He seemed to know where he was going, and soon they were on a wide, flat, handicapped accessible trail.

He had thought Erik had invited him as an afterthought, convenient since John's death had been relatively nearby, in Brooklyn, but he knew that few parks actually had accessible trails which made him wonder if this location was a coincidence. He could easily have searched Erik's mind, but he didn't want to betray whatever small bit of confidence Erik still might have in him. Instead, his interactions with Erik reminded him of the game some of the older students sometimes played-- "two truths and a lie." Of course, at the end of that game, the lie was always revealed, while Charles was simply left with his suspicions. He'd believed it when Erik had expressed his condolences for Jean, and he believed what Erik said about John's death. And, though he knew it was silly, that count left him waiting for a lie. 

Erik continued pushing him in silence, which was uncomfortable without being awkward. Charles thought they had gone about a mile, but it felt much longer. He was on the verge of asking how far they were going when they suddenly arrived at a beautiful overlook. Erik pushed Charles right up to the edge of the guardrail, and Charles felt panicked for a split second. If Erik threw him over the edge, it would probably be ages before anyone would find him, even if he did manage to survive the fall. But, he reassured himself, if Erik had wanted to kill him, he certainly could have done it well before now. (And how strange, he thought, that **that** was reassuring.)

They both paused for a moment, enjoying the truly beautiful view, before Erik took the urn out of Charles's lap and gently removed the lid. He glanced at Charles, then leaned forward and tipped over the urn, carefully shaking it a little. Charles had wondered if Erik had been planning to say anything before they spread the ashes, but he wasn't particularly surprised by the silence. Words had always seemed unnecessary between the two of them, and these days neither of them really believed that Pyro would be able to hear. So they both beheld the now-empty urn quietly, until Erik gently placed his hand on Charles's shoulder and said softly, "Perhaps one day, we will again fight on the same side." 

"Perhaps," Charles replied, and it wasn't a lie, exactly, but he didn't know what else to call it when you say something that you know isn't true.

-- _fin_


End file.
